Terraform vs. Ansible
Both are 'infrastructure as code' and often appear side by side, so JDs treat them as interchangeable. They do different jobs: Terraform creates the infrastructure itself — servers, networks, databases in the cloud. Ansible configures what runs on servers once they exist — installing software, applying settings, rolling out updates. Teams commonly use both, Terraform first and Ansible second.
How to tell them apart on a resume
Terraform (provisioning)
AWS/Azure/GCP resources, modules, state files, 'terraform plan', Terragrunt, OpenTofu — building and changing cloud environments.
Ansible (configuration)
Playbooks, roles, inventories, YAML, patching fleets of servers, often next to Chef or Puppet — managing machines, frequently on-premises.
The question that settles it
“Did you use it to create cloud infrastructure like networks and servers, or to configure and update servers that already existed?”
Read the full definitions
Open the full tool for the other look-alike pairs, role profiles, and the JD decoder.